The Eyemote
by Tilts At Windmills
Summary: There are many things that Henry desires, but sometimes, it is just a certain expression in the eyes of his Master Secretary. Slash, Henry/Cromwell. Reader beware: it's M for a reason.
1. Part One

**A/N: Something I've been wanting to experiment with for a while (which does say a lot about me). A series of single-scene 'multi-shots', for want of a better description, which are essentially where my own twisted mind took the natural progression of all Henry's shoving of Cromwell up against walls during the series, but which ended up far darker than I ever intended. With this in mind, I should probably point out that I love Cromwell as a character, and I pretty much put him through hell in this story, not through dislike but because I apparently like to torture my favourite characters...and hey, judging by the Season 3 finale, James Frain suffers very prettily.**

**Warnings: PWP, smut, general kinkiness, twisty darkness and the shameless fetishization of Thomas Cromwell's neck. Contains themes of non-consensual sex that some readers may find disturbing.**

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_The Eyemote_

Cromwell looks at the papers clutched in his nerveless hands, as though their tangible presence can enlighten him in some way. Ink is worn into the hardened skin around his fingernails, and he can still trace the work of an errant letter-opener against the flat pad of his thumb from several weeks ago. He runs his eyes over the words again and again, numbly, until they become meaningless, a wave-break, no more help to him than a riddle.

Finally, bereft of anything else to do, he says, the words sticking like sand in his throat: "There is no other way."

This morning he had been almost fainting with exhaustion. He has scoured every inch of documentation he possesses, every contusion of the law, every oversight and possible loophole, every potential for manipulation and avenue of escape. He has read until his eyes smarted and his back sang with pain, until his German translations were indistinguishable from gobbledegook, as far as he can tell, and he has enough paper cuts to suck the blood from his fingertips. All has evaded him. Even with the full muster of his clerks set like hounds on the heels of a solution, none has been caught. He wants to weep with frustration, or to crawl into bed and never emerge again, miserable with humiliation and hopelessly dashed plans. Instead, he must stand here and admit to his King that Anna von Kleve is his bride into perpetuity, for worse or for worse still, for the poorer of His Majesty, unto the death of _someone_, at least.

But that is not all, of course. More than anything, he feels the weight of dread gathering on him, the knowledge that his every stumble and hesitation further chips away the final clarity of his epitaph, leaving him bound to a doom that he knows is almost sickeningly inevitable.

More than anything, he fears the King's silence.

At last, like the coda to a curse that has long been threatened but always agonisingly with-held, the King makes a muffled sound from where he stands with his face averted, as though he is dragging his hand across his lips as he speaks:

"There is _always_ some other way."


	2. Part Two

2.

He hates, often. Perhaps he doesn't like to think that it is so, but indeed it is, whether he allows his mind to linger on it, or only glances at its truth from the side, askance, in-between the warm, dreaming groove where the softly blunted angle of Katherine's shoulder slopes into the taper of her neck, and the cold, unyielding hardness of the floor when he doubles over on himself in pain, the brilliant light of agony that radiates outward from the mutilated flesh of his thigh, nails cutting half-moons into his palms, a moan half-bitten through clenched teeth as his body voids itself and he feels the progression of hot humiliation spreading out down the insides of his legs. He hates, then. Well enough.

Henry feels a sneer creeping onto his face as he glares at his first minister; how he hates that expression of pinched anxiety, that nervous habit he has of pressing his lips together…it irritates Henry beyond measure. He has a sudden mental image of smacking Cromwell hard across the face, of shattering that prim, staunched nervousness and replacing it with naked alarm, blue-green eyes blinking up at him in bewildered shock…for he imagines his Lord Privy Seal on the floor from the blow. Yes, struck down, quite so. The mental image is so very satisfying that the sneer quite unconsciously begins to melt into a smirk as Henry considers it, barely even seeing Cromwell standing in front of him now as he pictures the moment…perhaps a little blood, too. Or a lot. A broken nose for his ineptitude? The expression of panicky, stifled fear on Cromwell's face will be a memory to relish and return to long into the night…

He knows exactly how the man will react. He is so pathetically predictable. Such a fearsome intellect, such calculating brilliance and tactical cunning, and yet his terror of the King seems to choke him at times. Henry feels his fingers itch with annoyance at the way the colour drains from Cromwell's face, leaving him blanched as a corpse. It would be an enormous pleasure to strike that white, strained face and raise mingled violets out with bruising…black, blue, yellow…the red of newly flowing blood. It would be most amusing to observe the Lord Privy Seal in his attempts at maintaining his usual emotionless composure with a ripely swelling black eye. A nicely split lip. How would he brazen that one out?

He hates almost fit to love.


	3. Part Three

3.

_There is always some other way._

He wets his lips to stave off a stammer, trying to master himself against the suffocating wave of fear he feels lapping at his stomach. He has readied himself for a storm of anger, for a thorough defamatory description of his person, his breeding, his heritage, his eye-colour, his credulity as minister of the Crown, for the sudden blow that leaves his ears ringing. It is a language of custom that he has learnt to endure, to even understand. Yet what he cannot abide, what he as come to fear as a kicked dog fears the sound of its master's footfall, is the quiet that precedes a more long-lasting retribution.

He has heard this quiet before, and knows its price.

"What is this, Mr Cromwell?" His Majesty asks suddenly, and he looks up in surprise. The King is watching him, eyes hooded against the light, his irises opaque and unfathomable. Cromwell opens his mouth without beginning to formulate a reply, the words perishing on his lips.

"What is this infernal trap into which you have ensnared me?" Henry says.

"Majesty!" Cromwell gasps, horrified at the terrible implication of the question, but the King is going on, as silken as a proclaiming lover.

"Am I to be beholden to another man's wife for the rest of my days? Since you can find no remedy to this debacle you have created, I am to be harnessed to this mare till it be God's pleasure to cast us asunder? Bartering my very soul on account of a _technicality_!" His voice snaps as he flings the napkin he has been restlessly tugging through his fingers down onto the table.

"Majesty, it was never..." Cromwell begins, haltingly, but this time he is stilled with one word: "'Silence!"


	4. Part Four

4.

He notes the slight widening of Cromwell's eyes, but then the Lord Privy Seal ducks his head, blinking, his expression determinedly, agonisingly neutral. He licks his lips, once again, before they soundlessly form a tentative word, a suggestion of '_Majesty_…' He makes a small movement as though to open the leather-bound dossier that he clutches...

In a flash, Henry strikes the dossier with the back of his hand, breaking its spine and making it buck open, the papers it contains spilling over each other in a cascade, slithering, swooping to the floor, the folder, upended, following them with a crash despite the frantic attempt Cromwell makes at swiping it from its fall. There seems to be time for several heartbeats before the oddly liquid sound of scattering papers extinguishes with the end of their tumultuous flight; some skitter to the other side of the room, sleek against the polished floor, others spiral like lazy birds in wheels of descent, carried by updraft. Cromwell stands in the midst of the disarrayed fan, gazing down at where they drown him in a white puddle, shock making him stupid.

"Mr Cromwell." Henry's voice emerges with pleasing softness, stroking the space between them, coiling itself like a smoke wraith around shadows lighter than itself. Cromwell blinks as though the speaking of his name has been a kiss, his lips parting. He meets his King's gaze, his own eyes wide with astonishment.

His terror of the King is almost palpable.

It is his terror for which Henry lusts.

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**Unless plans change, the rating will go up with the next chapter. Many thanks to everyone who has slogged through the melodrama thus far, particularly TrivialQueen and AestheticNarcissist.**


	5. Part Five

5.

The beat of silence plays put between them, and Henry's eyes fix on Cromwell's face, the anguished darkness of his eyes, the part of his lips as he breathes. Again, he feels that itch, the one that sparks between forefinger and thumb, an urge for the ringing sound of flattened palm against yielding flesh. He wets his own lips, fiercely. He can actually detect the staccato motion of Cromwell's shoulders as his minister's breathing quickens.

In three long strides, Henry closes the gap between them, even as he sees Cromwell visibly master himself against the urge to back away. His one hand closes on Cromwell's upper arm, the other braces flat against the man's chest, and in a single violent movement he has pushed him against the wall, hard enough to jolt Cromwell's head forward with such force that they almost clash noses, and Henry pleasures in the knowledge that Cromwell will have bruises in the morning.

He doesn't even care what any of this means. All that is important is this _now_, this possession, for is not Thomas Cromwell rightfully his, anyway? Does he not have a claim on him, a claim that he may choose to enact as he sees fit?

He knows that he is hurting him but he does not care…in fact, it only inflames him further; he _wants _to hurt him, and when he finds the taller man's mouth with his own, the kiss is punishing, plundering, and he isn't sure whether this is for his own pleasure or Cromwell's pain, whether he is driven by need, or simply the want to inflict. Bruising Cromwell's lips beneath his own, Henry tastes the starburst of blood from where the inside of Cromwell's cheek is cut against his teeth, and the tang of copper and rawness is almost aphrodisiac in the potent affect it has on Henry's arousal. He crushes his hands to either side of Cromwell's head, his fingers in his dark hair, forcing him into submission as his tongue invades the other man's mouth, thrusting beyond the barrier of his teeth and exploring the warm wetness inside. Cromwell's own tongue is pliant as Henry inflicts pressure on it, but he gulps raggedly, struggling to breathe, panicking with the lack of air and the suddenness of the invasion.

At last, Henry breaks the ravaging kiss to lay siege to Cromwell's neck, his fingers moving deftly to break the catch on his collar so that the Cross of St George falls free and the red gem clatters to the floor somewhere near their feet. He tugs the stiff fabric aside, and with it the black-fringed lace of the collar of Cromwell's undershirt, exposing the pale, soft flesh of his throat. It is with perhaps the greatest exertion of self-control that his life has known that Henry is able to pause a moment in his frenzied activity, and drink in the sight of his first minister's naked neck, his member filling. Somehow, by its very custom of being ever-concealed beneath his high, tight collar, Cromwell's neck seems as forbidden and agonisingly intimate a place as that other, itself hidden but ripe for the plundering. The tendons of Cromwell's neck flicker slightly as he breathes hard, his head arched back to expose the definition of his Adam's apple and the pale hollow at the base of his throat where his clavicle meets. With a small, guttural sound of surrendering desire, Henry turns his head and moves in, his mouth finding the curve of Cromwell's jaw-line. He feels the other man give a great start of surprise beneath him, a movement that causes his lower body to buck forward into Henry's, one hand flinging out to scrabble at the wood-panelling of the wall as though frantic for something, anything, that he might cling to throughout this ordeal.

His lust rising, Henry's tongue explores the definition of his Lord Privy Seal's jawbone with the small, lapping licks of a cat, the infinitesimal grains of stubble that have escaped the otherwise impeccable edge of the razor rough against his tongue. He feels the warm gust against his ear as Cromwell sighs, almost limp beneath him, his resistance only clear in the way he keeps his head turned away, as though he is trying to somehow remove himself from the moment and this is only another of His Majesty's whims that he must indulge. What the King wants, he must have. It is a thought that almost makes Henry want to laugh, here, tasting his first minister's own most intimate, atavistic scent on his skin beneath the soft fragrance of cologne. Cromwell was always far too polite for his own good.

But Henry is moving again now, his attention never long satiated, and he angles his own head to trail a line of wet kisses down Cromwell's neck, feeling the pinpointed fluttering of Cromwell's pulse against his lips, kissing it, the skin warm and thin there where the blood is nearest the surface. He traces its heat down to the base of Cromwell's throat, his progress a wet trail from his tongue that will be left to air-dry and which makes Cromwell shudder beneath him. Henry's member is so full and so stiff inside his breeches that it is almost painful, and it does nothing to alleviate matters when he feels the other man's throat vibrate beneath his lips as Cromwell makes a small, half-stifled sound, a helpless moan. With a sharp, feral swiftness, Henry redirects his attention again, nipping the curve of an ear, and Cromwell gasps with such violence that it is almost a cry of desire.

It is all Henry needs. Not that he is in want of any encouragement. The insistence of his own manhood is the most that he requires.


	6. Part Six

6.

He is pinioned firmly against the wall by the King's arm bracing across his chest, the one strong hand still clamping his shoulder. The King thrusts one knee forward, deftly forcing between Cromwell's thighs so that the Secretary has no choice but to part his legs. In an agony of humiliation, Cromwell squeezes his eyes even more tightly shut, until he sees stars bursting in the dark of his closed eyelids. The sense of powerlessness is terrifying; he feels horribly weak, almost too shocked to be humiliated, and yet when the King nips at his ear he jerks at the twin sensations of horror and desire that scorch through him. His body is responding unwillingly, fear and distress firing his every nerve ending and increasing the already unbearable pressure of his erection confined tightly within his breeches. It is so long since he has even felt the ministrations of his own hand that his arousal is leaping up with an almost indecent desperation. Not that there is anything remotely decent about this situation.

It is a rare occurrence that Thomas Cromwell ever uses a whore. He values his integrity, a perhaps misguided sense of honour; he likes to think of himself as remaining faithful to the memory of his dead wife, and inviting harlots into his bed would horribly compromise those ideals. He is alone, often, and while he does still long for the solace of companionship and physical affection that has slowly slipped away from him over the years, he has contented himself with the thought that isolation in this life is a price he has to pay for his Reformation. And yet there have been occasions when, wracked with stress over the demands of his occupation, he has surrendered himself to taking time out of his heavy schedule for a much-needed release. He is always painfully dismayed and embarrassed by what he is, in his mind, stooping to, and it is perhaps for this reason, or perhaps for the sheer infrequency of the event, that his staying power is low; he ejaculates quickly and forcefully, deeply intense orgasms that make him gasp and cry out, exhausted, desperate.

In these moments, it has never been his desire to be kissed. Just as he prefers to keep affairs of state strictly professional, never allowing the personal or the emotional to intrude in any way, here his dealings with the whore are as (albeit hurriedly) formal as any business transaction. His mind sternly refuses to make the lewd pun that such a scenario suggests. As it is, he submits himself to her skilled ministrations, her small, firm hands running lightly across and rhythmically massaging the tender inner flesh of his thighs, shivering slightly in surprise at the sensation of her hair brushing there as she leans in, then the instance that he both dreads and anticipates in any agony of expectation - the feeling of her wet, warm mouth enveloping his painfully full erection, almost enough in itself to send him crashing over the edge, her lips tensing along his shaft, the exquisite agony of her tongue exploring the swollen, weeping head of his member. She has already shrewdly attuned herself to the idiosyncrasies of his body, and knows the rhythms of pressure and movement _just so_.

And yet, even after the intensity and appalling vulnerability of climax, once she has calmly wiped her mouth and he has adjusted his dress, trembling slightly with weakness and shame, he pays her, and she departs. He denies himself the rituals that he knows other men like to indulge in: touching her hair, and feeling her breasts, a mockery of courtship. Kissing is entirely out of the question.

And yet still…and _yet_. Through the sick, black waves of overwhelming bewilderment, the room revolves once like the spinning of a child's top at the sensation of the King's hard, full lips against his throat, and for a moment Cromwell thinks that he might faint, the wall behind him the only thing preventing him from collapsing to the floor. Through the shock and terror of his assault, he can still taste the King's kiss in his mouth.


	7. Part Seven

**AN: Firstly, huge apologies for the gap between this chapter and the last. I'm in my final year at university, and the workload has been consuming my time to the extent that I was pretty shocked when I realised how long it's been since I last updated both this and 'Trick of the Light' (for those who read 'Trick', I will also be updating that hopefully soon-ish...well, I'll be updating it, anyway :D). Secondly, huge thanks to everyone who has read and left comments since the last chapter; I never imagined this pervy little fic would attract so much attention, and I totally love and appreciate all the amazing comments I've been getting. Suffice to say, I will be wrapping this story up without another long break in posting, so keep an eye out for the next part in a couple of days or so.**

**As for this part, it's short, but it's pretty hard R, so do mind how you go.**

7.

He has not explored the mechanics of male garments from this angle before, but with his mouth still busy at Cromwell's neck, Henry's hands travel downward and meet again at the same place: at the lacing of Cromwell's breeches, which, he finds to his satisfaction through a brief, tactile investigation, are much the same in construct as a woman's stays. As he nurses the tender ridge of Cromwell's collarbone with his tongue, Henry's deft fingers make swift work of the herringboned catgut, untying the knots blind before pulling the laces free from the waist of Cromwell's breeches with a snap. With the same firm motion, he untucks Cromwell's shirt, eliciting a violent gasp of surprise from the other man, and lays claim to the flesh beneath with a flattened palm that slides upwards across the warm, bare skin of Cromwell's stomach.

He has one aim in mind, and he leaves off from his attentions to Cromwell's neck in order to witness its effects in their full, helpless rendering across his minister's features.

Beneath his touch, Cromwell's chest is lightly muscled and sparsely furred, rising and falling in a feverish rhythm that only quickens as Henry spreads his fingers out, exploring contours of muscle, the delicate ridges of his breastbone, feeling beneath his palm Cromwell's heartbeat, palpitating like the wings of a small, trapped bird inside his ribcage. Cromwell's head is tilted back against the wall, his eyes still tightly shut in a determined, pained mask of almost stoic suffering, as though opening them will somehow make all of this real. A glimmer of moisture frosts the dark lashes of his right eye, just at the edge, and Henry is suddenly fascinated by the prospect of licking the fragile skin of Cromwell's eyelids, drawing his tongue from corner to corner and tasting the sweet-salt of his first minister's tears.

The callused edge of his thumb finds Cromwell's nipple, already helplessly erect, and circles it, slowly, aware that the roughened skin is grazing the sensitive areola, for Cromwell shudders beneath him and moans, a deep, feline sound from the back of his throat that makes Henry hiss with desire.

In the same moment, Cromwell opens his eyes and looks straight at him, almost in confusion, and it isn't like permission, not quite, it isn't a kind of longing, but more of an urgency, as though he is silently pleading with Henry to put him out of some piercing misery, to relieve him of an agony of anticipation. A flush is high in his cheeks and his green-blue eyes are alight with that same intense need, perspiration glistening on his upper lip as he holds his King's gaze, silently, the harsh breathing of both men the only sound in the room.

Henry moves quickly now. His hand is out from underneath Cromwell's shirt and once again at his breeches, pulling them down over his thighs. With an ease borne of years of experience, his frees his own erection with one hand, and even if he is unused to the precise anatomy of such a partner, it is with a certain effortlessness that he slides his hands up the backs of Cromwell's exposed thighs, cupping his round buttocks and massaging them, firmly, turning his head in order to claim Cromwell's mouth once again, and this time, he is sure that he feels the other man's lips moving against his in response.

He squeezes Cromwell's buttocks, hard, and Cromwell moans into the kiss, the vibration of the noise against Henry's lips enough to make him want to pinion the man and fuck him, hard, against this wall, right now, until he breaks through that ridiculous front of protocol that even now Cromwell is still holding in place, and makes his Lord Privy Seal scream, long, loud, in passionate desperation. He can feel Cromwell's own erection pressing against his stomach, hot and hard, and it twitches as Henry inserts a preparatory finger into his anal hole. Henry breaks the kiss to graze his teeth against Cromwell's cheek, nipping at the soft, downy skin just beneath his ear, and then, bracing a hand against the wall beside Cromwell's head, with one hard, swift thrust, the King is inside him. Cromwell gasps, seemingly from pain, his head jolting back against the wall and his eyes cinching shut, mouth slightly open, an expression of exquisite distress on his face. Henry can feel the other man's core reflexively tensing around his own member, tightening to encompass him so much like the channel of a woman, and he growls in the ferocity of his desire, thrusting again until he is impaled to the hilt in his minister's warm depths.


End file.
